


Doctor Jones

by GrumpyJenn



Series: The Other Ones [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Comfort Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/pseuds/GrumpyJenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha Jones was a doctor - very nearly - and she knew a crazy person when she treated one.</p><p>In fact, the man she grew to know as the Doctor was crazy - almost certainly sociopathic - by human standards. But Martha also grew to understand that aliens could not be judged by human standards. That would happen later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amie33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amie33/gifts).



Tall, thin, good-looking. And clearly, utterly mad, as he accosted her in the street. She didn’t feel threatened though; just bemused. In addition to mad, he seemed... harmless. No, not harmless as such, but certainly not a threat to _her_. And of course, after dealing with her family this week - Tish and Leo were well enough, but Mum and Dad, well - after all _that_ , a skinny man popping up in front of her and doing odd things with a tie wasn’t all _that_ crazy.

But then she saw him again, whilst doing rounds with Mr. Stoker, and he had... he _seemed_ to have... _oh don’t be thick, Martha,_ she thought, _you know he hasn’t got two hearts_. He winked at her though, and she wasn’t so sure. There was something very odd about this whole day.

And that was before the hospital ended up on the moon. In a rainstorm that went _up_. And the mad, skinny patient - John Smith, or so he had said - he claimed to be an alien, and took her out on the balcony and _oh!_ It was amazing, brilliant. To be on the surface of the moon, and he was behaving as though it happened every day - which, to be fair, _was_ possible if he was an alien called the Doctor as he claimed - it was absolutely brilliant. Then there were what? soldiers? They were real proper aliens, not aliens that looked human, and the man calling himself the Doctor - and as far as Martha was concerned he needed to earn that title - said they were _Judoon_. It even _sounded_ alien, and that was brilliant too.

But then there was an awful lot of running, and a sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor – yes, all right, _the Doctor_ \- killing something called a _slab_ with an X-ray machine. And then shaking all the radiation into one of his feet and binning the trainer, and when she said he was mad, he said “You're right. I look daft with one shoe. Barefoot on the moon!” and clicked his teeth in a little snarl as he binned the other shoe. And more running and the Judoon tagged him as an alien. She hadn’t really believed him before that. Still _more_ running. And then... then he said he was sorry and it meant nothing... and he kissed her.

Martha couldn’t even think; she felt a warm surge of arousal and even as one part of her mind - the medical student - recognised this as adrenaline and a normal fear reaction, the rest of her mind shut down entirely. The Doctor kissing her was all _sensation_ , and there was no room for conscious thought. He let her go and ran off, leaving her to find her own way, and she was terrified and exhilarated and a little dizzy with it... and then she realised from the people she saw in the hallways that they were beginning to run out of air.

Things got a bit fuzzy after that. She called the old lady who was really an alien out to the Judoon, and she used the last of her oxygen to revive the Doctor, and when she woke up she was back on Earth, sitting in the back of an ambulance trying to get her breath back.

And he disappeared as she reassured her family.

\--/--

The party was a bust. Poor Leo. Honestly, why couldn’t Dad and Mum just get along? Martha sighed as she watched everyone go their separate ways. Dad and his mid-life crisis, Mum and her bitterness. And then there he was. The Doctor. He gave her a little wave and a half-smile, and disappeared round a corner.

Martha followed.

“I just thought,” the Doctor said, “Since you saved my life and I've got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road testing, you might fancy a trip.”

“What, into space?” Martha was a bit incredulous. The spaceship looked like an old-style police box. How would they fit? And it looked as though it was made of _wood_. He really _was_ mad.

“Well.” That self-deprecating little grin.

“But I _can't_. I've got exams. I've got things to _do_. I've got to go into town first thing and pay the rent. I've got my family going mad...”

“If it helps, I can travel in _time_ as well,” the Doctor said, a trifle smugly.

“Get out of here.” _You cannot._

“I can.” Now he seemed even _more_ smug, but... calm, assured.

“Come on now. That is going too far.”

“I'll prove it,” he said, and climbed into the box. Martha watched it fade out as it made a strange _vworp vworp_ noise, and that medical-student part of her noted that if it were human she’d prescribe asthma medication for it. It reappeared and she saw him with the tie from earlier today. “Told ya.”

“No, but... that was this morning. But, did you? Oh my god you can travel in time. But hold on, if you could see me this morning why didn't you tell me not to go into work?”

“Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks.”

She gaped at him, but she stepped into the box when he offered - the TARDIS, for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. She took one look and had to get out, to figure out why it... how it... _oh_ , it was even more amazing than being on the surface of the moon - it was bigger on the inside and beautiful in almost organic sort of way and...

And the Doctor - he was clearly so... so _sad_. At least, if he were human it would be sadness, and Martha rather thought it was the same for him. Missing his friend Rose, claiming she - Martha - was absolutely _not_ a replacement. _Methinks the Doctor doth protest too much,_ she thought, and teased him about kissing her, wearing tight suits, travelling across the universe to ask her for a date... but she left off teasing when it was clear he was uncomfortable.

“For the record, I’m not remotely interested,” Martha said. She was lying, of course she was, because he _was_ wearing that tight suit and it looked good on him, but it... it seemed important to him. “I only go for humans.”

“Welcome aboard, Miss Jones.”

“My pleasure, Mister Smith.”


	2. Immortal Bards, Floating Cars, and an Awful Lot of Running

**  
**In their next adventure, Martha Jones saved the world by quoting _Harry Potter._

It had been quite a trip.

Martha was quite relieved that there would be no worries about stepping on an insect or killing her grandfather and changing her own future. She’d been a little concerned about the cheap tricks comment he’d said just before they left for here... or _now_ , or _then_ , or whatever one called it when travelling through time. And she’d read plenty of stories and seen lots of films where time travel did just that, destroyed the future by making one stupid mistake...

Martha liked the Doctor quite a lot, and she was honest enough with herself to admit that she fancied him more than a bit. But she didn’t quite _trust_ him; he wasn’t... predictable. And Shakespeare picked up on that, of course he did, he was a genius. And while it was awfully flattering to have _William Shakespeare_ \- stinky breath notwithstanding - fancying her, Martha fancied the Doctor. And he didn’t even see. She thought. Maybe he saw but he didn’t _want_ to see, or maybe he was just so stuck on Rose that he _couldn’t_ see... or maybe he was just ignoring it because he wasn’t interested, Genetic Transfer Kiss or not.

And why was she so... obsessed anyway? He was good-looking, certainly, and there was a mysterious sort of charm and a blinding intelligence. But she’d encountered these things before and not become obsessed. _Ugh_ , she thought, _let’s just concentrate on saving the world for now._

And they did, saved it all the way back in 1599, from witches who weren’t really witches, if Martha understood it correctly; they were aliens who used words instead of maths. Sounded like witchcraft to Martha, but how was she to know?

But still... _Shakespeare!_  

Ye Olde London was amazing, but New New York... it was both terrifying and thrilling. And sad and hopeful. All those voices singing, the knowledge that gender and even species didn’t matter anymore, the death of the entity known as the Face of Boe. So many emotions mixed up that Martha was a bit overwhelmed, but also angry with the Doctor. He seemed to _enjoy_ playing the inscrutable alien bit to the hilt; he talked constantly but never said anything, and it was driving her _mad_. In both senses of the word, actually, and she was finally angry enough with him to sit down and refuse to budge until he talked to her, really _talked_ to her. And he did.

It was heart-wrenching.

There had been a war. The last of the great time wars, the Doctor said, and he ended it himself by... entombing his own people along with their enemy.

He didn’t cry as he told her about the War, meeting Rose and Jack. He didn’t cry as he told her about Mickey and Adam. He didn’t cry as he told her about Sarah Jane and Madame Pompadour, or even when he told her about losing Rose. He didn’t cry.

But his _eyes_...  Martha thought her heart might literally break from the pain in his eyes. It was like the look she’d seen in the eyes of some of her patients, veterans, but impossibly, infinitely worse. The eyes of a man who had seen - who had _done_ \- far too much.

Martha didn’t understand him. But the healer in her felt compassion, even pity, and from then on she was... gentler with him. More understanding when he behaved in a way that seemed to her inhumane as well as inhuman. It didn’t help her fancying him, but she could be... kinder about it when he was oblivious.

Even in _Old_ New York, where the creatures he’d destroyed along with his own kind in the Time War were trying to take over, and had somehow made hybrids of themselves. Sure, Martha complained to Tallulah that the Doctor was oblivious - which Tallulah had amusingly taken to mean that the Doctor was gay - but Martha didn’t nag the Doctor himself; he was too distressed by the Dalek-Human hybrids. Martha shuddered.

Back to London, in Martha’s own time, more hybridization, and it shouldn’t _work_ that way, this guy tried to use his machine to live forever but it was unstable and he... Martha shuddered again. Tish had gotten a promotion and a raise and that was great, and she was so happy when her boss had gotten so young, but then... then he turned into a... a _thing_. It was just like the Dalek-Human things in Old New York - combinations that should never _be_ , weren’t stable, even by the Doctor’s alien standards. And they _were_ alien – he wittered on about throwbacks in human DNA and how he liked her shoes in the same breath... god he was _weird_.  But he clearly cared about humans. Not just Rose, but humans as a species, to the point where he pitied the Lazarus hybrid even as he did his best to destroy it. With an _organ_ of all things.

She gave him an ultimatum; she wouldn’t go on one more trip, like a favourite niece being taken for ice-cream. He made her an official fellow-traveller, and Martha supposed that meant he trusted her. She didn’t know how she felt by this point; compassion and affection and mistrust and frustration and friendship and lust... they were all mixed up in her head. Oh, she fancied him... he was fancy-able, and oh god, now she was thinking like him and...

The next thing she knew they were in a ship, a very warm ship, so hot they had to get out of the area where they had materialised and get somewhere cooler. The Doctor had rigged Martha’s phone so she could call anywhere, any _when_ , and if that wasn’t amazing alien technology she didn’t know what was. But this ship, it was hot and apparently it was falling into a sun because the engines had cut off. With a bloody _pub quiz_ as the security protocols. The Doctor figured it out; the sun they had scooped for their fuel - it was alive, and hurting, and angry that they had scooped it, they had to give back the sun particles and everything would be all right.

Except that the Doctor was infected, oh god, infected by that sun trying to burn him up, burn them all up from the inside, and apparently being an alien was an asset because he could take the freezing it out that humans couldn’t. He tried to warn Martha that something would happen to him if he died but she shushed him; he would _not_ die, not if she had anything to say about it. She shut him in the cooling pod and she ran, ran as she had never run before, to tell them to send the particles back to the sun.

When it was over, in his blowing-hot-and-cold way, the Doctor gave her a TARDIS key.

 

 

 


	3. Aliens in Human Shape

Martha _hated_ this. She didn’t really mind cleaning up after people - or not much - but she hated _this_... the way the Doctor wasn’t the Doctor just now, he was John Smith, and it was up to her to keep them safe from a threat she knew nothing about. In a time where she hadn’t any power at all. In her own time she was... normal. Just another female medical student, and her skin colour and class meant very little. In _this_ now the skin colour was apparently not the problem, except that it relegated her automatically to part of a lower class, and therefore she had very few rights and privileges, and real difficulty in getting anyone to listen to her.

Especially John Smith.

Who treated her like a _mascot_ of some kind, the faithful servant who always looked after him, as though she had no mind of her own. Martha had to force herself to remember that he trusted her, or he wouldn’t have put his life in her hands this way. She still fancied him, saw the way that nurse looked at him and was jealous. But most importantly, he was Martha’s friend, somewhere underneath the John Smith facade, and she had to remember that. She _must_ , for his own safety and hers, and probably the rest of the world’s as well.

But it wasn’t easy. _He_ wasn’t easy. Love him or not, he was hard work.

Martha had never been afraid of hard work; medical school was hardly a cakewalk, was it, and her parents were hard work too. But the Doctor was hard work of a kind she didn’t know, she had no idea how to look after him here and now, except to continue playing the part of his maid. Which was a whole other kind of hard work, wasn’t it? She certainly had a new respect for the orderlies who cleaned up after the patients in hospital. Or anyone who fought in a war. But then, even as she was trying to work it all out in her head, how to protect them both, _then_ he fell in love with a human.

And it wasn’t Martha.

What the hell should she do now? She couldn’t leave him here and now, even if she wanted to she couldn’t. And some small part of her held out hope that once he was himself again he’d realise his mistake and how well Martha had looked after him, and.... oh, _damn_.

While Martha’s mind was wittering on about what to do, all hell broke loose.

She loved him and he didn’t love her and the pocket watch went missing and one of the older boys in the school was somehow _different_ , and Jenny and a man from the village and a small girl with a balloon, they were _all_ different, as though... as though possessed. Then he fired her, and she was certain all was lost, they’d never survive, the world would end. So she went to the TARDIS and got the sonic screwdriver, and met him at the dance to force him to remember.

And then all hell _really_ broke loose.

Those people _were_ possessed, by a group calling themselves the Family of Blood, and they were the ones she and the Doctor had been running from when they got into this whole mess. They... _disintegrated_ some people, and when Martha got the energy weapon away there was a standoff, and then she ran, as fast as she could, and took the Doctor and the Matron with her.

Martha wanted to hate the Matron, she really did, but she found that she couldn’t. The woman was kind and dutiful and brave, and it was obviously breaking her heart that her John Smith might not be what he seemed. After the headmaster was disintegrated by the little girl with the balloon, the three of them - the Doctor, Martha, and the Matron - they worked together to get the children to safety. But Martha could see how much it pained the Matron - as she realised the man she loved was not who he seemed - how much it hurt to see that he was a stranger.

And when the boy - Tim Latimer - came with the fob watch, the Doctor refused to be a part of it until he was shamed into it. But the Matron... no, _Joan..._ asked Martha and Timothy to leave so she could talk with her John Smith, and Martha’s envy and jealousy didn’t matter anymore once they were through and the Family was defeated.

Because Joan was in the same boat as Martha... unloved by the man she wanted.

\--/-- 

And it didn’t get better in 1969 either.

Oh, Billy was well enough, a good bloke, caught in circumstances he couldn’t control. Much like Martha herself, she thought, but then she had asked for it in a way, hadn’t she? She’d gone willingly with the Doctor, knowing from the first accidental encounter in hospital - not to mention the others after it - that near _him_ was not a safe place to be. Billy hadn’t had the luxury, and he’d gotten touched by an Angel and sent back in time his first time out.

But the Doctor was his usual self, timey-wimey detectors and so ridiculously brilliant that even Martha - who was no slouch in the intelligence department thank you very much - even Martha couldn’t follow everything he said. Again. It was both infuriating and very attractive. As usual.

She wondered as she worked in a shop to support them both in 1969, whether Rose had been able to follow him. Rose had been a shop girl after all, not much education, but she had been clever from what little Martha had heard. Heard when the Doctor had finally sat on a rickety chair in the ruins of New New York... it seemed so long ago now... and told her the story of his life since the Time War. Martha stood in the little shop in 1969, and she wondered what kept the Doctor going. She didn’t think it was her, or even Rose.

Why all this running from other aliens in human shape? Scarecrows, the Family, the Weeping Angels... didn't matter, they were all still aliens in human shape. Or was he running from the other alien in human shape?

Himself.

 


	4. The End of All Things

_You Are Not Alone_

Martha had heard the Face of Boe say it to the Doctor back in New New York. If she had had any idea what those four words meant, she might never have gone anywhere else with the Doctor. But she didn’t know, and she went, and it was her fault that Yana had become the Master, and brought the Toclafane to Earth and...

Well.

There they were, end of the Universe, and met a man. Good looking man, Jack Harkness, and... warm, friendly. _Too bad I’m not in love with him_ , Martha thought, _he looks much easier to get along with_. She found herself liking him though, very much, and feeling terribly flattered at warm male attention for a change. Even if he seemed to aim it at everyone willy-nilly. The blue insect-lady he aimed that charm at next was nice, though.

And in spite of keeping the Doctor’s hand in a jar - he said it was a Doctor-detector - and his ability to come back to life after an unprotected ride in the vortex, Jack seemed to have a far better handle on the basics of human decency than the Doctor. _Social skills_ , thought Martha, _unlike the Doctor or the Professor, who go off on science tangents at the drop of a sonic screwdriver_. They were very alike in some ways, the Doctor and the Professor.

Martha and Chan-tho helped the people get onto the rockets for Utopia, and by the time they came back they had become friends. The insectoid woman was kind, and funny, and clearly brilliant, and there was a kinship there, in fancying men who didn’t know they were alive. They were alike too.

But then there was a problem with the radiation chamber, it overloaded, and the man inside died horribly. Jack was electrocuted but he came back again, just as he had after the Time Vortex, and volunteered to fix the radiation chamber... because he couldn’t die. And Martha heard it all, heard the whole story over the radio, how Rose had brought Jack back, how the Doctor had abandoned him there on that station, how the Doctor could hardly bear Jack’s existence - and it was clear to Martha from his voice how badly that _hurt_ Jack, even if the Doctor was oblivious - and how Rose was trapped in that alternate world. Just as the story ended, Professor Yana pulled out his old fob watch, and it looked... oh _god_ it looked just like the Doctor’s, like John Smith’s, and Martha tried to warn the Doctor, tried to tell him, but...

...she was too late 

Chan-tho was dead.

Yana was the Master.

The TARDIS was under his control.

The futurekind were almost through the door.

And it was all Martha’s fault.

\--/-- 

They escaped the futurekind, but it was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because next they were on Earth, in Martha’s own time, and there were _Vote Saxon_ posters everywhere. And Martha _knew_. The Master was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and he clearly knew all about Martha and Jack and the Doctor. He was somehow in their _heads_ , all the humans’ heads, even Jack’s, and Martha’s attention was jerked back to Jack and the Doctor when the latter spoke sharply to her for tapping her fingers.  The Master... he _knew_ about them, he bombed Martha’s flat, and...

...and he took her family.

Then they were running again, running away from the Master and his minions, the three of them against the world, and even as Martha shouted at the Doctor that this was all his fault, she didn’t believe it. _All my fault_ , Martha thought, and the thought wouldn’t stop; it went round and round in her head even as they ran. _All my fault, I should’ve run when I first saw the watch, I should have taken it from him, I should’ve gotten to the Doctor faster, I..._ and there it went again, faster and faster in circles in her head.

Now _everyone_ was after them, Martha and the Doctor and Jack, they were thought to be armed and dangerous terrorists, framed for the murder of the entire Cabinet, and Jack’s colleagues at Torchwood - the people who could have denied those charges - had been sent off out of reach.

So they ran.

They stopped and hid in an abandoned warehouse, and the Doctor told them about the Master, his life as a child, and Martha just watched and listened. He told them of Gallifrey, and the Untempered Schism, and how the Time Lords were never meant to interfere in what they saw ( _Ha!_ thought Martha, _that’s a bunch of bollocks!_ ). And she had been right - he _was_ running from himself, had been since he was eight years old. _Nine hundred years_ , she thought, _that’s a lot of running_. She listened as Jack told them he ran Torchwood now, watched as the Doctor got angry with him for it and was placated as Jack told him it had been done in his honour. The pain in Jack’s face and voice as he tried to get the Doctor to understand... it was... right, well. Jack opened a message from a woman - a reporter - who had sent it to Torchwood, and a split second before the Doctor said it, Martha realised how the Master had gained control over millions of people.

It was the _phones_.

 _My god_ , thought Martha numbly, _I have an Archangel Network phone_.

And so did almost everyone she knew.

If the Master wouldn’t come to them, they would have to go to him. There was no help for it; it must be done, and so the Doctor arranged for keys, keys to make them... unremarkable, a perception filter to keep the Master from knowing them. Rather like when someone fancied you and you’re oblivious, the Doctor had said, unthinkingly cruel by human standards, and Jack’s reaction told Martha he loved the Doctor too... and just as fruitlessly. And so they used Jack’s vortex manipulator to board the _Valiant_.

Martha had never wanted to kill someone before, not really. She was a healer, someone who helped people, but if she had had the opportunity she would have killed the Master herself for the way he treated her family. And Jack would have helped her. But the Doctor, no, the Doctor was apparently above such petty desires. Although he seemed to have second thoughts when he saw with the Master had done to his TARDIS.

They sneaked into the meeting room on the _Valiant_ , and then everything happened very fast. President Winters was killed by the Toclafane and Jack was killed by the Master and the Doctor was aged a hundred years as Jack revived and told Martha to get out, _please_ just get out and stay safe, and pressed the vortex manipulator into her hand... but she couldn’t leave them.

Then there were _billions_ of them, the little metal spheres that were the Toclafane, and Martha used the manipulator... and disappeared.

\--/--

Martha was cold, but that was nothing new. She felt as though she’d been cold and wet and hungry and scared for the better part of a year now. She could warm up, but she still felt cold inside. Ever since she had killed that man, the one who had gone mad in the ruins of New York and tried to keep her there... she’d felt cold since she’d had to kill him. She wasn’t _meant_ to kill people, she was a healer, she was meant to save them. And that’s what kept her going, the knowledge that all this was done to save her world and its people. That and the thought of three men and two women on the _Valiant_ , counting on her.

The core of ice thawed just a little as she landed back in the UK, her own home soil. _Tom Milligan_ , she thought, _decent bloke, good looking_. Martha sighed. Good to know she wasn’t dead at least; if she could find him attractive there was some hope for her. Good people, the rebels here, even though Docherty would run to tell the Master about her. It wasn’t the woman’s fault; the Master had her son, and Martha understood that, so she fed the older woman a story.

And the Master believed it.

That cold knot in her gut warmed a bit as she boarded the Valiant and saw her family, and Jack, and the _thing_ the Master had made of the Doctor, even as it tightened with fear. She knew how to play it... the power of love and forgiveness and all that. It wouldn’t have worked without the Archangel Network, using the Master’s own weapon against him. But she did it, icy knot and all, because it had to be done.

It was done. The earth was restored, the _people_ were restored, and nobody but those on the _Valiant_ remembered anything. The Master was dead, shot by his wife, and wouldn’t regenerate; he refused rather than be stuck with the Doctor for eternity. Martha loved the Doctor, but she wouldn’t care to be in a box - no matter how big on the inside - with him forever, and she shuddered at the thought of _any_ sort of kinship with the Master.

She would have to leave the Doctor. Her family needed her; there was no-one else. Nobody who had been on Earth remembered... not even the psychiatrists. They would need someone to talk to, to work through the trauma of the Year That Never Was. And besides, the last year had taught Martha something important. She was perfectly fine without him. She would miss him, and she would always love him on some level, but really... she didn’t need the Doctor any more.

Martha decided she would tell him after they took Jack home to Cardiff. He deserved an explanation. But then Jack shocked them both; he was - would be, had been, _whatever_ \- Jack was the Face of Boe. And he took off for Torchwood, or home, or wherever he went in Cardiff, and left the two of them standing there open-mouthed.

They entered the TARDIS, and she suspected he knew what she was going to say.

“Right then!” he said in a cheery voice that was patently false. “Off we go. The open road. There is a burst of star fire right now off the coast of Meta Sigma Folio. Oh, the sky is like oil on water. Fancy a look? Or back in time. We could, I don't know. Charles the Second? Henry the Eighth? I know! What about Agatha Christie? I'd love to meet Agatha Christie. Bet she's brilliant. _”_   Martha didn’t answer and he sighed. “Okay.”

“I just can't.” Martha’s throat hurt as she said it, but it needed saying.

“Yeah.” He knew.

“Spent all these years training to be a doctor, now I've got people to look after. They saw half the planet slaughtered and they're devastated. I can't leave them.”

“Of course not. Thank you.” He hugged her _._ “Martha Jones, you saved the world.”

She smiled at him. “Yes I did. I spent a lot of time with you thinking I was second best, but you know what? I am good. You gonna be alright?”

“Always, yeah,” he said, but she knew he was lying.

“Right then. Bye.” She left the TARDIS, but sighed and turned around. She owed him the whole explanation. All of it. “Because the thing is, it's like my friend Vicky. She lived with this bloke - student housing, five of them all packed in. And this bloke was called Sean. And she loved him. She did. She completely adored him. Spent all day long talking about him--”

“Is this going anywhere?” the Doctor interrupted.

Martha sighed again. “Yes. 'Cause he never looked at her twice. I mean he liked her. That was it. And she wasted years pining after him. Years of her life. 'Cause while he was around she never looked at anyone else. And I told her, I always said to her, time and time again, I said, "Get out." So this is me, getting out. _”_ She tossed him her phone. She certainly didn’t want to keep it now, and it could be useful in his hands. “Keep that. 'Cause I'm not having you disappear. If that rings - _when_ that rings, you better come running. You got it?”

“Got it.”

“I'll see you again, Mister,” she said, and left.

Martha went into her house - her mother’s house, as her flat was gone - and up the stairs to her old room. She carefully locked the door and flung herself onto the bed, but she did not cry. She couldn’t, not now, not while her family needed her so much. So very much. The cold knot was still in her middle, but she could cope now; she knew how to cope. She was a doctor - or very nearly - and dealing with other people’s pain was what she was best at. She just needed a little rest first, that was all.

And so she sat, hollow and empty-eyed, until Mum came home.

 

 

 


	5. Aftermath

Then there were nightmares.

They all had them, Martha’s whole family, and nobody to talk to but each other. So they all talked to Martha, knowing that she knew... but not realising she had nightmares of her own.

She never spoke of them herself; how could she? She was the strong one, the doctor who looked after others, the one who had only been alone, not in the _Valiant_. Not being tortured by the Master or worse, watching the terrible things the Master had done to the Doctor and to Jack. Martha noted that her family - her parents especially - saw Jack in the same way as they saw the Doctor. Not quite human. So while they had felt both horror and pity for Jack and the Doctor because of what they had witnessed (they were decent people), it wasn’t quite the same for them as watching a _real person_ be abused. They could be a step removed.

So Martha’s nightmares consisted of both replays of her own trials walking the wounded Earth, and eventually, what her mind made up to fill in the gaps of what her family told her had happened on the _Valiant_. Scenes of her parents being zapped by the Master’s laser screwdriver, of the Doctor being tortured in unspeakable ways by the Master, and of the Master and his Toclafane... _experimenting_ on Jack, to see how far they could go before he would die and revive and start all over again. Martha would wake in a cold sweat, gasping for air as she dreamed of them drowning Jack, poisoning him, slicing his skin and timing how long it would take for him to die.

She couldn’t get to the Doctor, make sure he was okay. Well, she _could_ , but she knew he wouldn’t tell her anyway. But Jack was here, on Earth, in bloody _Cardiff_. Not so far away in space or time. So Martha rang him up.

“Martha Jones, my lovely nightingale, what can I do for you?” He _sounded_ fine, Martha thought, his normal self. But she found herself choking up.

“Jack... can I... can I come see you? Please?”

His tone immediately changed to one of concerned affection. “Any time, Martha. Meet you at the Plass?”

“Three hours, Jack. I’ll get a train. And Jack? Thanks.”

“Like I said, Nightingale, any time.”

\--/-- 

Martha didn’t get as far as the Plass; she found Jack waiting for her at Cardiff Central. They just stood for a moment, staring at each other, and then she rushed him, throwing her arms around his waist under his greatcoat. _So warm,_ she thought, _someone warm to hold on to_. She could feel Jack’s chuckle under her cheek. “Happy to see me, Martha Jones?” It was his usual flirtatious manner, the normal tone of voice, and she just held him tighter, as though he would disappear if she let him go. “You OK, honey?” Jack asked, his tone one of concern again, and she nodded against his chest, then stepped back to look up at him.

She took a deep breath. “I’m okay. I just... I needed to see that _you_ are. I...” she trailed off as he looked at her strangely, then looked around them.

Jack held out his hand. “Come on, we can find someplace quiet to talk.” Martha nodded and put her hand in his, and he led her to a hotel across the street and up to the front desk. “A suite,” he said, and winked at the young man behind the counter, who blushed. He handed the man a credit card, accepted a card key, and reclaimed his credit card. Martha felt too tired to protest in front of the desk clerk, but she roused herself as they got into the empty lift.

“Jack, I can pay for a room...”

“Hush,” he said, and kissed her forehead, “I have connections in this town you don’t.” He smiled at her. “Not since the rewind anyway. Come on.” He handed her the card key and led her out of the lift. Martha followed, bemused, and inserted the card into the key slot, then looked around the revealed suite.

“Wow.” Martha stood in the doorway. “They don’t fool around, do they?”

“I’d bring you home with me," Jack said, tugging at her hand until she followed him to the sofa, “But I’d have to retcon you after; you don’t have clearance to visit Torchwood.” He smiled and shoved Martha gently down to sit. “Now, tell me why you were worried about me, Martha. I’m fine, I promise.”

Martha looked into those blue eyes and found nothing but compassion and concern for her there, no aching, haunted pain like she’d seen in those of her family, and she felt herself choking up again. “I...” Her eyes filled with tears and he made a concerned noise in his throat and gathered her close so that her head was snuggled under his chin. “T-tish and Mum and Dad... they don’t have anyone else to talk to and they said... they t-told me some of what the Master did to you.” She burrowed further into his chest, feeling foolishly needy but craving the comfort of someone taking care of _her_ for a change. “I just had to make sure you’re ok-kay...”

Jack pulled back and took Martha’s face into his hands so he could see into her eyes. “Martha. The Master was not the first person who... did unpleasant things to me to see what makes me tick.” He sighed. “And he probably won’t be the last. I’ve learned to set it aside and keep going, because I’ve _had_ to.” His thumb stroked her jaw and his voice dropped. “You take care of everyone and you haven’t had anyone care for you for over a year. Poor baby.”

“Yes, well,” said Martha, trying to sound cheerful. “Bit difficult when the shrinks have all forgotten, isn’t it?”

And the Doctor?” Jack asked neutrally. “He won’t talk, I assume?”

“I...” Martha took a deep and shaky breath. “I left him. I love him, Jack, but he’s not... he’s not good for me.”

He looked shocked and... impressed?... for just a moment, then shook his head. “Me neither.” He looked sad, Martha thought, but he was clearly coping, better than she was. She wrenched her attention back to what he was saying. “...have Torchwood. They don’t remember of course, but because they’re Torchwood they’re able to accept being told about it. UNIT would too, even though not all of them were there.” He paused at the look on her face. “What?”

“I’m so glad,” she murmured, “that you’ve someone to talk to.”

“Isn’t there _anyone_ nearer you, even if they don’t remember, who might understand if you told them?” Martha felt her face grow warm, thinking of Tom Milligan.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ve been worried about keeping my family stable more than about who I could talk to--”

“And that’s the problem,” Jack interrupted. “Who heals the healer? Even I can only do so much in a few hours, Martha Jones,” he said, eyes twinkling in the usual flirtatious manner as he raised her hand to his lips and began to nibble at her knuckles. She raised her eyebrows at him - she wasn’t sure how much of this response was automatic flirting, how much was pity, how much was friendship - and he shrugged. “Up to you of course, but I _certainly_ wouldn’t mind. How long can you stay?”

“I wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t thought they could last the weekend without me,” Martha said simply, and Jack smiled at her.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” he murmured, and bent his head to kiss her properly.

\--/-- 

When Martha awoke, she was alone in the bed, but she could hear Jack’s voice, apparently talking into a phone. “ _...yeah, I’d like to add my... to his, yes... Colonel, the woman saved the Earth, pretty much single-handedly, you know that... oh.”_ Martha heard Jack chuckle. “ _Thanks, you won’t be sorry.”_ He peeked into the bedroom of the suite, and smiled broadly when she waved her fingers at him. “The nightingale awakens, I see. Feel better?”

Martha stretched. “Much, thank you.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and she laughed. “I mean it, Jack, and I’m not just talking about the... physical.” She grew serious and held out a hand, which he accepted and came to sit next to her on the bed. “You were right,” she said softly, “I needed someone to look after me for a change, even if just for the weekend. The medical student in me _knew_ that, but the healer... I needed convincing.” She stretched again and reached for him. “Want to convince me again?” And she pulled him to her and down into the warm bed.

\--/--

On Sunday Jack took Martha to Cardiff Central, with a ticket home and a formal letter of introduction for the colonel currently in charge of UNIT in London. “I recommended you,” he told her, “But I suspect the Doctor’s recommendation means more to them. Sometimes UNIT thinks Torchwood is too... direct.” He smiled down at her and hugged her tight. “I’m glad you came,” he said into her hair, and she hugged him back. Martha knew there were tears in her eyes again, but she was far less... anguished than she had been, and the cold knot in her belly had eased.

She would be fine.

 


	6. Tom and Torchwood

There was always Tom.

The Tom who Martha had looked up after the Year That Never Was - he was a kinder and softer Tom than the one she’d known for just a few hours before the reset, before he’d died to get her onto the _Valiant_. When she’d first tracked the other Tom down, wanting to see with her own eyes that he too had reset, and they’d gone out for coffee, she had been terrified to talk to him about that Year - what if he didn’t believe her? She’d have to take it slow, relate it to things he might remember, like science fiction films or...

But he _had_ believed her, and in fact had wound her up a bit when she’d asked diffidently about aliens, and whether he remembered the news reports of the hospital’s disappearance? He had laughed, and patted her hand on the table where they sat drinking one of those complex coffee drinks. “Martha,” he’d said, eyes sparkling at her. “I was _there_. There at Royal Hope.” He’d shivered slightly. “I’m a paediatrician, you know. And I heard about that Lazarus, who turned into a... a _thing_. And those ghost things, and the killer Santa robots one Christmas. So yeah, I do believe in aliens. Why? Are you one? You look human to me.” And he’d given her one of those looks up and down, the ones she’d wanted from the Doctor, the ones Jack gave everyone he met.

That was worth a lot.

Martha had considered staying with Jack. For about a microsecond. He wasn’t pining after anyone, but some of the same problems applied to him as applied to the Doctor. The never-aging thing and all that. Probably going to become the Face of Boe, for God’s sake. He was just too much _work_ , and she’d had enough of that for a while. She hadn’t the emotional energy to love a man like Jack Harkness along with caring for her family and the other people who had been on the _Valiant_ , and starting her new job at UNIT. No, they could be friends, and if they’d had a lovely weekend of more than friends in a comforting-each-other sort of way, well, they were both adults. And she would never speak of it again.

It was simpler that way. Martha rather craved simplicity at the moment.

And there _was_ Tom, who loved her not because she had saved the planet (he didn’t remember), and not because she was a replacement for a lost love. Just because she was _her,_ a woman he didn’t know who nonetheless had tracked him down to see if he was okay. He loved that about her; he said flattering things about compassion and proper attitude for a doctor. He wasn’t simple in the intellectual sense of course, but he was a much simpler man than either Jack or the Doctor. A man who had his pet causes and little quirks, but he was so straightforwardly kind that he definitely filled Martha’s craving for simplicity in life.

Eventually - only a few weeks really - she began to love him too.

And her job, she loved her job. Working for UNIT was brilliant, and while only a few of them had been on the _Valiant_ and remembered the Year That Never Was, the others had obviously been briefed. They accepted her for who she was, looked at what she had done during that year, and decided that - exams or no - she qualified as a doctor in her own right. Oh, they’d tested her of course, made sure she was qualified, but she wouldn’t have to go back and do her last year of preparing for practice. Well, thank goodness for that, it’d be hard to go back to medical school now without getting terribly out of patience with the whole process.

But they were so terribly _military_ , and it made Martha nervous - she’d heard rumours of arresting people and leaving them to rot, no trials or anything. She was a doctor, not a soldier, no matter what she’d been forced to do during the Year she prefered not to think about. It occurred to her that it was not the most compatible workplace for her, but... well, she owed them, for giving her the job, for deciding she was already a doctor... and maybe she could work from inside, and make it a friendlier place. Jack had done it with Torchwood, all on his own, and it was worth a try anyway.

What was really funny was that UNIT thought Torchwood was the hard-arse group. Jack had warned her that this was the case, but Martha got the definite impression that the current-day UNIT had no idea what the current-day Torchwood was doing since Canary Wharf had been destroyed. Torchwood under Jack seemed more... clandestine, she supposed. More infiltration and less guns blazing. At least that’s how it was when UNIT sent her to Jack with information on a strange rash of deaths... with all sorts of warnings about the dangerous people there.

It was a right laugh; they were just _people_ , and certainly less strange than some she’d met. Now granted, very few people at UNIT had met aliens other than two Time Lords (and a few had met a host of insane Toclafane), so perhaps she had a broader idea of what constituted ‘within the realm of normal variation’. Owen and Tosh and Gwen and Ianto were definitely within that normal variation, and if Jack wasn’t quite, well, she knew him and knew what to expect from him. Outrageous flirting, mostly, that could switch to alert and angry in a blink of an eye.

Martha wondered if Jack could see all the undercurrents going on in his Torchwood Hub. That Tosh was hopelessly in love with Owen, who didn’t really see her. That Owen’s habitual sneer was simply that, habit, and used to hide even from himself how absolutely terrified he was most of the time. Jack’s own almost obsessive love for them all, especially Ianto and Gwen. Martha wondered if he ever let himself think about that. She rather thought not; she was all too familiar with the come-here-get-away routine.

God knew she’d experienced enough of it with the Doctor.

Martha decided she wasn’t really lying to Gwen when she said the intensity she and Jack had had wasn’t sexual. The sexual parts had been friendship, comfort. The intense bits had been entirely separate, and she really didn’t want to think about the two things at the same time. And with Tom off in Africa right now, and her family stable, Martha rather enjoyed her time at Torchwood. It brought back that little thrill that came from not knowing what was around the next corner. _Mystery_. She enjoyed it, almost revelled in it, even though she was scared half to death at the Pharm.

Until Owen had to be a hero.

Martha wasn’t sure she would ever get over Owen’s death, for all she had known him for so little time. Toshiko was nearly incoherent with grief, and Jack... Jack seemed to feel responsible. She supposed he felt he could have stopped it somehow, but he wouldn’t talk about it, and so she left him to Ianto.

It was possible, she reflected later, that she should not have left Jack on his own, even with Ianto to keep an eye on him. Because what happened to Owen - the... _resurrection_ , she supposed she should call it, and the Weevils and Duroc and everything - well. The whole thing rather reminded her of Lazarus, so long ago. Saving lives was one thing in Martha’s mind, but extending them past their time, or reviving them when you didn’t know what you were doing, that was quite another.

But Jack Harkness was a law unto himself, and he had found a way to revive Owen. He had said it was to get some codes and to let them all say goodbye, but Martha _knew_ him, and she could see the pain and the guilt in his eyes. Jack had been hoping against hope that maybe his own regenerative power would transfer, that he could bring Owen all the way back, and when he hadn’t... there went the guilt through the roof again. Poor Jack.

It was just as well Martha was recalled back to UNIT, though she’d miss Gwen’s wedding. She had been right, it was too hard. She wanted to go home and deal with something simple - an alien invasion maybe, or a nice straightforward plague of some kind. And Tom would be back from Africa, maybe there could even be some truly normal human interaction for once.

She was looking forward to it.


End file.
